Rana Plaza: Improvement for Garment Workers after Four Years?

A Bangladeshi woman survivor is lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh on April 25, 2013.

Today marks four years since the catastrophic Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over 1100 workers. And before that, 350 garment workers had lost their lives in fires at Pakistan’s Ali Enterprises factory and Bangladesh’s Tazreen Fashions factory.

Michelle Chen at The Nation reports that while some improvements have been made in safety and health conditions, workers’ core rights to organize unions and fight for decent wages and safe working conditions continues to deteriorate.

Rana Plaza and other factory disasters in recent years have spurred some regulatory breakthroughs. International pressure drove some nationwide reforms for factory safety to prevent so-called “death trap” incidents, culminating in a legally binding international factory-safety accord. And minimum wages have been increased incrementally.

But Nomita Nath, president of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation warns that suppression of workers’ right to organize harms not just their ability to earn a living wage, but also their ability to ensure safe working conditions.

Nath says the ability to organize is not just a parallel question to the material issues of wages and safety; without the collective power of a union and access to a collective-bargaining and grievance process, workers cannot gain genuine autonomy and hold bosses, or the international industry, accountable.

“It’s interlinked because it’s all a matter of labor and workers…. In Ashulia, we are not getting our minimum-wage hike,” Nath says. “Safety issues are also related with that. If there is no union, if we don’t raise our voice, the owner will [continue to be] lacking on safety issues.”

Meanwhile a coalition of unions and human rights and labor rights advocates led by Human Rights Watch issued a joint report earlier this week calling on garment companies to publish information that will enable advocates, workers, and consumers to find out where their products are made.

Last year, a coalition of labor and human rights organizations endorsed the Transparency Pledge, which sets a minimum standard for publishing supply chain information. The coalition contacted 72 apparel and footwear companies, urging them to carry out the pledge. The pledge reflects existing corporate practices on disclosure, and aims to foster a level playing field in the industry.

Seventeen companies will fully align their disclosure practices with the pledge by the end of 2017. Many others are moving in the right direction. But the industry still has a long way to go. Well-known brands and retailers like Forever21, Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Primark, and Armani are among those yet to embrace transparency.

Deutsche Welle notes that little in the industry has change, whether in South Asia, China or Eastern Europe:

Despite newly implemented sustainability and social responsibility programs by “fast fashion” brands such as the Swedish clothing giant H&M, which recognizes Germany as its biggest European market, the industry looks very much the same it did four years ago.

According to a recent study by Sarah Labowitz and Dorothée Baumann-Pauly published by New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, 3,425 inspections have taken place since October 2015 in Bangladesh, for example – but only eight factories passed them.

Bangladeshi activists mark the fourth anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse

“There are two reasons why so few factories are successfully being fixed. First, the most essential upgrades to make factories safer, such as electrical improvements and moving to purpose-built facilities, are expensive,” says the research, estimating the average cost of remediation to $250,000 – $350,000 (230,000 – 322,000 euros) per factory. The second reason, according to the research, is that brands see it as the suppliers’ responsibility to pay for these expensive factory repairs.

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4 Comments

Of course, the companies doing best are those who signed the union-fashioned Accord. The (US) rump that opted for the transparency-lite Walmart alternative are those failing. Electing for auditing over action was always going to fail.

It was the Accord that this month that gave us a concrete example – literally and metaphorically – of the role of union representation in allowing workers to say no to a possible worse-than-Rana collapse.

Fixing safety issues costs money and means less profit. It always, always comes down to money. And greed. Someone is always filling their pockets while the other nameless workers suffer. Have you ever read “The third man”? There is the scene at the Ferris wheel where Harry compares the people to ants: “You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?” Too many care too little for others.
It does not matter which country we are talking about. Just like in a company, it has to start at the top with a strong commitment. What that means for OSHA or any other regulatory institution is that there needs to be enforcement.

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Appreciate it!